The Gazette

Sakamae

Fryz Rukiego nawet fajnie się prezentował w teledysku do Distress And Coma, ale na żywo... Pzypomina mi teraz Miku z AC z tą przyglebaną fryzurą lol oomg

Piosenka nawet fajna, ale jakoś kolejne pv z psychololibaletnicą mnie nie przekonuje... A Uruszka ma oczojebnie zielone spodenki o_o XDXDXD

~~Wywiad Rukiego z kwietniowego Fool's Mate~~

In March 2009 Gazette were able to look back on seven years (of band history), which seemed to be a road of success only, without any hardships along the way. However, behind all of that there had been plenty of distress. Still, they were able to break loose even of those thorns, and even more so and due to that are able to pursue their own free selves in music and vision.

In this issue for the personal interview it is Ruki, who chose this suit for the photo shooting just as freely, and he talked about his own fashion-taste, as well as the things which changed within Gazette, compared to the old days.

A modern counterattack in arts.

- Lately, whenever Ruki-kun comes here for an interview, your clothes seem to be really distinct. Has it always been like that?

[No, it hasn’t.]

- Certainly, I think it was in April 2003, when I met Ruki-kun for the first time at some venue, I remember how you wore a checkered jacket with tons of buttons attached to it.

[Ah, it must have been like that. During that time I usually wore a lot of very showy/fancy clothes. Back then I really liked [Hama Mike], who had been played by Nagase Masatoshi, hence I came to wear those patterned shirts, as he had been a big influence on me.]

- When did you start to get interested into fashion?

[It must have been around the third grade of Middle School. That was the time, when I started to listen to hide-san’s and Kiyoharu-san’s CDs.]

- During that time, I believe, hide-san’s and Kiyoharu-san’s styles were both pretty extreme, weren’t they?

[Yeah, while hide-san wore flower-shirts and tulip hats, Kiyoharu-san wore suits and Air Max shoes. Their style was completely different, but I really like this kind of eccentric fashion. At first, I was kinda cosplaying them. I bought a leopard-print Casquette –hat, the ring with the eye-ball and such…]

- So to speak, you were the typical Rock-Kid, weren’t you? Have there been other artists you looked up to concerning their fashion?

[Someone who had been influencing me fashion-wise would have been J-san. It was the time, when Luna Sea’s album [Mother] had been released, that he wore a lot of rubber bands around his arms, which I would imitate, or the ring holding a bug or the one with the letter A in it, also that Celtic cross he wore…such things.]

- You did see a lot of things. (laughs) Did it happen a lot that you got interested in/started to like those artists with such a unique fashion sense?

[If anything, it was those eccentric and individual styles, besides, even now there are quite a few people who are told to be fashionable. During Middle School I also liked the SEX PISTOLS, however I lived pretty much in the countryside and I really didn’t know where I could buy those Gauze-shirts or any punky clothes. Also I didn’t have the money to do so, therefore I would tear off the posters and try to sew those shirts and things like that by myself a lot.]

- And speaking of which, this is also how hide-san created his very original style, by using those punk-influences.

[From there on my way of getting interested in things changed a little, as I became interested in those hardcore (bands) like SOBUT’s Motoaki-san, who was their guitarist. It was that Rockabilly-style I really came to like and I tried to dye my hair red and such. Or Hi-Standard, that was the kind of style I liked then. It was the time when half-pants and ankle sock where quite in fashion.]

- That was somewhat a weird style, wasn’t it? (laughs)

[Yeah. Once into Visual-Kei I got rid of that completely. However, during High School my hair was pretty short. I liked bands like [Nunchaku] or [KEMURI] with their Japanese-core music style. Speaking of which, during that time I really wanted to become a tattoo-designer.]

- A tattoo-designer? Did you consider getting a tattoo?

[No, but the bands I listened to back then used a lot of illustrations for their CD jackets, which had been drawn by tattoo-artists. It was the same with that band, which’s live I went a long with. They used those traditional Japanese design and gore-pictures as illustrations for their CD jackets, which had been made by their families. My friends even wore T-shirts with those designs, which showed pictures of how they had been deceived, like those holding the neck of a defeated samurai and the letters reading [Trator!] I thought that was extremely cool! From there I started to draw pictures myself.]

- To express your own emotions with those pictures.

[Yes, like that. Somehow I wanted to become a tattoo-artist, to get down to the root of these pictures. However, thinking about it thoroughly, I really didn’t know how to become a tattoo artist, and when I was old enough to get a job, I was only told, that there wasn’t such a thing as [tattoo designer]. (bitter laugh) I was also in a band then and I had been pretty lost concerning my future.]

- Since you wanted to become a tattoo artists, have you been satisfied with the illustrations you drew therefore?

[The school I went to was actually an art school. I knew no one there and the pictures I drew were actually a good chance to make friends for me. There was an occasion, where the guy sitting in the last row would draw a picture of Jean Simmons (KISS), and while I was drawing something else, I would start a conversation like [Do you like that band?]. And that’s how we became friends.]

- There were no friends from Middle School left?

[The school had been in another prefecture, so there wasn’t a single person left.]

- During that time, what kind of fashion did you like?

[Pretty usual as I had to wear a school uniform, just without a neck tie, since I really didn’t understand why neck ties were in fashion. It was also the time of somewhat punky fashion, therefore we stuck safety pins to out uniforms and shoes, sometimes even to our skinny pants and neck ties. With our uniforms the outer wear was extremely tight and those pants were pretty hard to wear. However, at that school there were also people liking hippie fashion, with psychedelic-patterned scarves and bell-bottom pants. This was going into various extreme directions and those liking bands would be the Yankees, with their blond hair. However, separated from all of that were the Anime-Otakus. Actually those Anime-Otaku were the ones interested in Visual-Kei and use Shitajikis (vinyl boards to put under drawings) with their pictures. Once we would see those photographs, we would all say [Wooooaaah! That’s terrible!]…I really didn’t see it coming that, today, I would be like that. (laughs) Anyway, most of my Sempais at that school had been punks so actually the rate of spiky hair was pretty high. I was also one of those using Gatsby hair wax. (laughs) Because I would be scolded, if I had prepared my hair like this at home, I would do it in the bathroom at the station, but then I would be told to get it down again by the teachers. So actually the only time I could have my hair all styled up, was on my way home. Also once you’d shave your eyebrows, you’d like get them drawn back on with permanent marker by the teachers. (laughs) There was also one of my Sempais who got suspended from school, because he had bleached his hair to blond.]

- Such art school can be really strict, right?

[Our school had been especially strict. You weren’t allowed to have a single piercing, but since that was the time, when I wanted to open my piercing wider, I planned this really carefully to not get caught.]

- How long did it take until you got it open completely?

[I had it opened at once completely. I thought that out of all the guys I really wanted to have the widest whole (in my ear). Anyway, there was also a guy who had like a hole of 2 cm in diameter in his lower jaw .]

- That sounds like food could spill out of it…

[It actually did, like Miso-Soup and such. (laughs) That was really an idiotic thing!]

- So in High School you were a punk-kid like that.

[Yeah, like in the era of punk and hardcore. (laughs) Most of us were like that and somehow all my friends (including myself) dropped out of school, since going there was boring. At our school, being late or not going to our cram school had been an absolute NO GO. Anyway, I didn’t really want to go, so I didn’t go for like two week and in the end my credits weren’t enough. Therefore, during the summer of my third year in High School, I dropped out. That coincidence was just bad…]

- You did that although you would have been able to graduate if you had been patient for just another six months?

[Well, I borrowed a year book from one of my friends after their graduation and out of my class of 30 people, only 10 had been left. There had been people who left after the first day, also there had been some lethal incident during the second day already and that was basically the kind of school it had been. (bitter laugh) When I told my friends in Middle School that I’d be going to that school, they repeatedly asked me, whether that was some kind of punishment game. Even when doing the preliminary survey, there seemed to be plain resentment in most faces, just like in [Be Bop High School (Manga/Dorama)]. (laughs) Getting into that school was kind of unexpected and somewhat normal.]

- Well, that probably wasn’t very normal. (laughs) So why exactly did you leave this school?

[There was nothing more for me than being in a band. I had been invited right away to do the support for one of my friends’ band, which was actually a Visual Kei band. I think they are still active as a band today. Already in Middle School I had been using make up and played in a copy-band.]

- During that time, was it LUNA SEA you copied?

[Yes, we did. We thought about copying every single song. I think that was the band where I first used make-up with. When doing that, I thought it was very interesting and from there on that had been deeply implemented.]

- So you stopped having that punky spiky hair?

[Yes, I dyed it a really shocking pink (instead) – that so called “Visual-pink”. However, it was also the time when I dyed my hair in many different colors.]

- Was that still the time, when all clothes had been black?

[Since that was about 10 years ago, it must have been and gradually it all became really maniacally. I liked that music, which was basically putting a curse on you with its darkness.]

- Again, that was a pretty extreme direction you had been taking. (laughs)

[I had wings attached to my black costume and my face was all white. (laughs) I wanted to do something really original, when I was the drummer in the band [Mikoto]. However, I went with the guitarist of the band I had been supporting prior to that, to a CD shop, since we thought about forming a band together and there we saw a flyer of another band. They looked really cool, so we went to see them for their next live.]

- What did you look like, when you went to that live?

[It was basically my pink hair combined to a white shirt and a black neck tie. It wasn’t very normal. Basically I looked a lot like the fans today. However, since [Migoto] was pretty similar in atmosphere (compared to that band), Uruha, Reita and I came to form our band [Karasu] as guitarist, bassist and vocalist. We thought we were really cool. Since we called ourselves [Karasu] (crow), we wanted to create music as if being the counterpart to [Swan Lake]. However, that band was somewhat cursed itself, because it wasn’t at all popular.]

- (burst of laughter) It wasn’t…???

[Absolutely not. At that time, when still being the drummer, I was the girly character of the band…]

- The girly character? I really can’t imagine that from today’s point of view. (laughs)

[I had my hair in pig-tails, blond and with feathers and there were leaves around my drum set and such. (laughs) At that time, we were told, that since we were just like the band before that, they weren’t really expecting anything. (bitter laugh) From there on we have changed our style more and even though we were able to draw up to 90 people together, we eventually broke up again…around that time there was also this other band [Kar+te=zyanose] forming, where Uruha asked me to join if I agreed to be the singer. That is when I changed from being the drummer to being the vocalist. That was, by the way the time when bloody shirts and gauze were in fashion for costumes. (laughs) That band also broke apart after only three months and that was also, when Uruha, Reita and I decided to form our last band together, which would be today’s Gazette.]

- Was there an overall concept you were following, when you first formed Gazette?

[Well, at first, we just went with what was in fashion. (laughs) Around that time it was those bands sounding like those popular during the Sho-wa Era. (1926–1989) We just went along with that. After that we thought about doing something nobody else did, like thinking about using school bags even…………that was the root of all evil. (bitter laugh).]

- But somehow you still went along with that style, didn’t you?

[However…it didn’t match. Also, it wasn’t popular.]

- (laughs) At that time all of you had names written in Kanji, right?

[Reita had been [Reiki], Uruha’s name was [Kyouki]. At first, mine was [Kirihi], when I thought about changing it into [Rukia], there had already been someone with this name, so I stuck with [Ruki]…and I thought it was cute.]

- These days, cute wouldn’t be so favorable, now, would it be?

[(laughs) At first [the Gazette] had been written in Katakana, too, basically, because names written like that were really rare.]

- After you lay down going along with those things in fashion, did your band image deepen?

[At first we changed our rout, and then stayed with that a little until we met our stylist, who made our costumes for the first time. Still, our popularity was declining and we couldn’t bring out a CD, and before we had been leaving our label of that time, we had been falsely informed, that PS Company had been interested in Gazette. (bitter laugh) And when we went to PSC just like that, they were kinda looking at us, asking if we were serious…]

- However, luckily, eventually that might have been the reason, why you got into that company. Do you remember what kind of ideas you put into making your costumes at that time?

[The first (real) costume we ever made was used for our photograph on a flyer PSC used, and it was the one where I had that bow around my collar. And then it was the one with the Kanji written in it, which we used for [Cockayne Soup]… I really wonder what kind of fashion that was back then. I think that was also the time, when we attached that [Dai Nippon Itan Geisha] phrase to our image. It was a little like a right-wing party…]

- It was a strongly opposing image, wasn’t it?

[At that time we released [Cockayned Sout], [Spell Margarita] and [Akuyukai], which were completely different regarding their content, nonetheless we thought about combining them into one alum. It was around that time, when we started to say that we don’t have a concept…because actually, we didn’t.]

- Speaking of that, you really kept people awake with what you began by releasing pictures. Be it your costumes, your hair, no matter waht you always had this very original touch to yourselves.

[Well, it couldn’t be helped that we actually liked having our pictures taken and therefore we wanted to do something different every time. Which still doesn’t mean we had a concept.]

- So whenever you designed something, did you all match your ideas?

[No, we didn’t, we actually just did this freely just everyone by himself.]

- Ruki-kun’s private clothes also changed quite a bit, didn’t they? Back then, you, wearing a knit hat would have been quite unimaginable.

[It would be basically any kind of hat, really.]

- In what way exactly did your clothes change?

[Basically something that wouldn’t suit anyone else is what I am thinking of…]

- Among you and the band?

[No, also among other bands…however, I can’t really explain why. I did wear that read checkered jacket quite a lot. (laughs) Ah, I remember, back then I only wore stuff from ALGONQUINS…certainly my way of thinking about this issue has changed quite a bit. After that PPFM had been released…although at that time it had had way more of a Rock-image, and after that I had like SEXY DYNAMITE LONDON…]

- That’s pretty much the style of Marui-One (department store) today.

[Yeah, pretty much like that. (laughs) However, I still wonder why I would have changed after that……..at that time I wasn’t into leather jackets either. Maybe only after releasing [Madara] did I change from the more normal clothes to those with more of a Rock-image.]

- So what’s your recent boom?

[That’s a good question. Until now I hadn’t been wearing suit much, so I wanted to try wearing them more, just like the one today. I got bored with the overly showy style, which is also reflected in my private clothes. Wanting to do this photo shooting in a comfortable way, I chose a suit to do it.]

- For a suit worn by an artist it is way more casual, yet it’s order-made in length and fits way better than a branded item. How did you get interested in this suit?

[It’s like a suit by Tanaka Nojimi. Also, it fits extremely well and tight, which I really like these days. It’s not just about how this feels directly, but I like that loose image of a suit and a simple shirt. Usually, I don’t even wear suits.]

- And you are not thinking about designing your own fashion any time soon?

[Not really, just T-Shirts is fine.]

- Those T-Shirts that had been sold at the Budokan Event in January, among the Gazette good, had been T-Shirts designed by Ruki-kun.

[Yes they were. Until now, I am doing all the T-Shirt designs for our tour goods. I think, designing costumes is one thing, but normal fashion is pretty difficult. Even when I go shopping for my own clothes it’s like I take shirts of that brand, pants of that brand, jackets of that and shoes yet of another.]

- That sounds quite luxurious. (laughs)

[Usually I go from shop to shop and chose from lots of different thing…which is the reason behind my vanishing money. (laughs) But I think it is bad for me to choose from only one brand let alone using a catalogue.]

- In case you had to say [This is in fashion for the season], what would it be?

[…probably nothing in particular. (laughs) According to the year, it could be depending on the brands, but I’d just wear, what I want. Lately fur coats are back in fashion, but I am not really interested. In case I really like something I don’t care about how much it costs. There are not many people wearing brands from Japan and I really like those emphasizing one’s silhouette…that’s how I think. As of late it seems that movie directors and photographers have an incredible eye for fashion. I like those things which are somewhat casual and yet totally stunning to wear.]

- However, lastly, what is Gazette’s next style you are going to show us?

[Lately I am totally into Daft Punk and I like this cyber image, like from a near future…]

- So are you going to take this onto the live stage as well?

[Yes. I think there’s going to be parts of it, too. I hope I can create something even newer in its sensation. I have to think about how I can still create something heavy, yet even just a little digital all at once. In the stage setting as well, I really want to do something which couldn’t be felt until now….well, it’s going to be difficult.]

- I think the stage director and your lighting-crew are going to give their best just as always.

[Yeah, because we usually decide things after talking everything through very thoroughly. Our lighting crew is really amazing. The stage setting is like…a battle of calculations. Even as we decide to use LED’s there still might be things we can’t think of just yet. I would like it to be even wider in range. That’s something that’s troubling me. I want to take this into making it the definition of what Visual Kei is today…and that is my thinking behind all of this.]

The End

Miyo

CLJ Records wyda w Europie nowy album the Gazette, zatytułowany DIM. Ukaże się on tego samego dnia, co w Japonii, czyli 15 lipca, i ma być dostępny w dwóch edycjach: regularnej i limitowanej. Specjalna wersja europejska zostanie wzbogacona o dodatkową książeczkę, zawierającą angielskie oraz japońskie teksty piosenek w romaji.

Sakamae

heh to już wiem co chcę dostać na urodziny Very Happy

Niania-chan

Jeju, kiedu oni zrobią sobie jakąś przerwe..., wakacje albo coś w tym stylu..?
Podoba mi się tytuł Very Happy

Chikuma

Nową płytę zaś wydają? Wow, jestem do tyłu Very Happy

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Szpilka

Hah , Gazety , moj pierwszy J-rockowy zespoł jakigo posłuchałam . ^^
emm , jak pierwszy raz obczaiałam ich piosenek , Burial applicant było ta pierwsza to całkiem mi sie spodobali do mometu az Ruki nie zaczoł sie wydzierac xDD emm , no coo , wczesniej słuchałam spokojniejszej muzy xD w kazdym badz razie przekonałam sie do nich , i słucham juz ich 2, a nie długo dobre 3 lata ;] uwielbiam wocal Ruxona , ahh xd no i Uru za te jego grube uda Very Happy